Angelo Laroche sometimes thinks about the basement apartment he shares with his older brother off Flatlands Avenue in Canarsie and can’t believe that he lives there.

“I look at the walls and say, ‘This is where he was,’ ” Laroche said. “I can’t really describe what it feels like to be there.”

The apartment’s previous tenant, Andrew Goddard, shattered Laroche’s life just over three years ago when, following an argument with Laroche’s mother Maureen Greenidge, Goddard allegedly shot her, leaving her to die in the driveway.

Goddard has been in jail since his arrest shortly after the Oct. 2, 2002 shooting and, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office, he is awaiting a pretrial hearing set for Nov. 14. Goddard faces charges of second-degree murder, second-degree attempted murder, reckless endangerment in the first degree and unlawful possession of marijuana.

Greenidge’s murder, which allegedly stemmed from Greenidge and another family member’s attempt to evict Goddard for not paying rent, left Laroche and his older brother, Atiba, without parents, since their father, David, died of a heart attack four years earlier.

“I was devastated,” said Laroche, who is now 18 and a senior at Grady H.S. in Coney Island. “I didn’t know what we were going to do.”

He and Atiba moved briefly to another brother’s apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant, but quickly had a falling-out there. Atiba moved back to their old house and when Angelo turned 18 and was able to live on his own, he did the same, returning in June.

But the family’s old apartment had already been rented out, so they were forced to live in the basement apartment where Goddard had lived for about a year.

“We didn’t want to, but we had no choice,” Laroche said. “There was nowhere else to go.”

So now Laroche uses the Social Security money he’s received since his mother’s death to help support himself.

Laroche’s life has changed dramatically since that fall afternoon just over three years ago. The now 6-3 guard remembers shooting hoops by himself that day.

“The ball bounced away from me and he came by and tossed it back to me,” Laroche said of Goddard. “Everything seemed fine.”

Less than an hour later, according to the police report, Goddard first tried to shoot Atiba, who got away, and later killed Greenidge upon her return from work.

Laroche is now a senior and Grady head coach Mark Seltzberg has high hopes for the athletic player who gets up at 4 a.m. every day in order to take the long bus ride from Canarsie to Coney Island.

He is a member of the National Honor Society and plans on playing next year in college, likely at a Div. II school, where he wants to study business and become an entrepreneur.

“I think it will be great for him to get out of Brooklyn and get a fresh start somewhere else,” assistant coach Ron Cromer said.

But Laroche hardly seems bitter.

“It’s good that all this has happened to me in a way because it’s made me stronger,” Laroche said. “A lot of other people I know aren’t as strong as I am because I’ve had to become a man.”